What are your dinner plans? What are your heaven plans?
RC Sproul has a good series of teaching about Heaven. (One place to find it is in his recent podcasts on iTunes. You can also order the CD’s probably from his website.) It started to get me thinking about…Heaven!
Ya know, we humans are stuck in time. When something is far off into the future, we usually do not give it much thought. But once that something is in the near future, we begin to think about it more. So the level of our thinking about something in the future is directly proportional to the distance that something is in the future, or the distance it is away from us.
But our thinking about something in the future is not only directly related to its distance from us, but it is also directly related to how significant in meaning or greatness or size that something in the future is.
A few examples:
Getting married- When you are in high school, you probably do not spend too much time thinking about or preparing for marriage as you do when you are in college. When you’re in college, you’re much closer to the age of getting married. So here we see how distance in time affects how much we think about or plan for an event in the future.
Getting married is also a big event in one’s life. It’s so big that even way back as far as high school or younger, kids will think about it to some degree or another. But you won’t find a young boy, for example, thinking about his car insurance going down when he turns 25 in the future. That’s just not a big enough event for a kid to spend time thinking about.
Rather, a young boy would think about what’s for dinner that night or where the family might go that weekend for fun. Those events are small but in the young boy’s near future.
What I’m getting at is, a Christian dying and going to heaven is a profoundly huge event! Yet, I don’t think that the average Christian really gives it much thought. The question is why?
Well as talked about above, we tend to think a lot about something if it is either a huge something or is really close in the future. Heaven is huge, but our going there, we think, is far off into the future. But if you talk to a Christian well advanced in years, you will probably find that they think about their death and going to heaven a lot.
In fact, you will probably find that not only do they sit around and ponder the event, but their few remaining actions in life a geared towards preparing for that event.
Back to our marriage example: It’s a big event, and when you’re young, you may dream about it. But when you’re engaged and you’re about to be married, you don’t just sit around and think about it. You are busy making plans and preparations to be married! The direction of your life takes on a new focus.
The next question is why should young Christians not focus on heaven until they’re old? Why should we not prepare and plan to go there even in our young age? Why should we seldom even ponder what heaven is like?
We don’t know when exactly in the future heaven awaits us as Christians. If we’re young, we assume it’s far off. But how do we know we won’t die tomorrow? If we knew we would die tomorrow, would we not radically alter how we are currently living our lives, or perhaps at a minimum change at least a few things?
We all have plans. Plans for dinner. Plans for the weekend. Plans for the holidays. Plans to pay off bills. Plans to get that new toy. Plans to sleep in for once. Plans to go on a vacation. Plans to be a better person. Plans to lose weight.
Amongst all of our plans, how much are we literally planning on going to Heaven?? Do we have heaven plans at all? What are we doing now to be more sanctified? Are we walking in the Lord and working with him in the working out of our own salvation? Are we doing things to bring more glory to God and His kingdom? Are we enduring trials and earning crowns? How else can we plan to go to heaven?
If you’re a Christian, you’re going to heaven when you die. Think about that. Think about it often. Think about the fact that we are sojourners in this land. We’re just a passin’ through. Until heaven, what will we do?
Ya know, we humans are stuck in time. When something is far off into the future, we usually do not give it much thought. But once that something is in the near future, we begin to think about it more. So the level of our thinking about something in the future is directly proportional to the distance that something is in the future, or the distance it is away from us.
But our thinking about something in the future is not only directly related to its distance from us, but it is also directly related to how significant in meaning or greatness or size that something in the future is.
A few examples:
Getting married- When you are in high school, you probably do not spend too much time thinking about or preparing for marriage as you do when you are in college. When you’re in college, you’re much closer to the age of getting married. So here we see how distance in time affects how much we think about or plan for an event in the future.
Getting married is also a big event in one’s life. It’s so big that even way back as far as high school or younger, kids will think about it to some degree or another. But you won’t find a young boy, for example, thinking about his car insurance going down when he turns 25 in the future. That’s just not a big enough event for a kid to spend time thinking about.
Rather, a young boy would think about what’s for dinner that night or where the family might go that weekend for fun. Those events are small but in the young boy’s near future.
What I’m getting at is, a Christian dying and going to heaven is a profoundly huge event! Yet, I don’t think that the average Christian really gives it much thought. The question is why?
Well as talked about above, we tend to think a lot about something if it is either a huge something or is really close in the future. Heaven is huge, but our going there, we think, is far off into the future. But if you talk to a Christian well advanced in years, you will probably find that they think about their death and going to heaven a lot.
In fact, you will probably find that not only do they sit around and ponder the event, but their few remaining actions in life a geared towards preparing for that event.
Back to our marriage example: It’s a big event, and when you’re young, you may dream about it. But when you’re engaged and you’re about to be married, you don’t just sit around and think about it. You are busy making plans and preparations to be married! The direction of your life takes on a new focus.
The next question is why should young Christians not focus on heaven until they’re old? Why should we not prepare and plan to go there even in our young age? Why should we seldom even ponder what heaven is like?
We don’t know when exactly in the future heaven awaits us as Christians. If we’re young, we assume it’s far off. But how do we know we won’t die tomorrow? If we knew we would die tomorrow, would we not radically alter how we are currently living our lives, or perhaps at a minimum change at least a few things?
We all have plans. Plans for dinner. Plans for the weekend. Plans for the holidays. Plans to pay off bills. Plans to get that new toy. Plans to sleep in for once. Plans to go on a vacation. Plans to be a better person. Plans to lose weight.
Amongst all of our plans, how much are we literally planning on going to Heaven?? Do we have heaven plans at all? What are we doing now to be more sanctified? Are we walking in the Lord and working with him in the working out of our own salvation? Are we doing things to bring more glory to God and His kingdom? Are we enduring trials and earning crowns? How else can we plan to go to heaven?
If you’re a Christian, you’re going to heaven when you die. Think about that. Think about it often. Think about the fact that we are sojourners in this land. We’re just a passin’ through. Until heaven, what will we do?
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